Films for Africa

The organisers of the CWFF in collaboration with the French Embassy, Culturesfrance, IFAS as well as UniFrance are delighted to celebrate the magnificent films by French master Alain Resnais. One of France’s most distinctive and highly regarded directors, Resnais was born in Vannes, France, in 1922.  He studied at the L`Institut hautes études cinématographiques before starting a career as a film-maker in the mid-1940s, making short films.  Of these, the most celebrated is Nuit et brouillard (1955), an eye-opening and devastatingly poignant documentary about deportations and Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War.

Resnais’ first full-length film was Hiroshima mon amour (1959), an unusual romantic drama which was developed from an idea for a short documentary.  The film was critically acclaimed in France and abroad and won Resnais instant fame, establishing him as a major director of the French New Wave.  His following film, L’année dernière à Marienbad (1961), was no less successful, a remarkable interplay of time and memory with some unforgettable visual imagery.

Although less prolific and reactionary than some of his French New Wave contemporaries, Resnais continued to make original and provocative cinema which was, for the most part, well received by the critics.  This included films such as Muriel (1963), La guerre est finie (1966), Stavisky (1974) and Providence (1977), the latter of which won him seven awards at the Césars in 1978. Widely regarded as one of Resnais’ greatest films, Muriel is perhaps the most perfect distillation of the themes of time, place and memory which dominate most of the director’s works.  Noticeably less abstract that his previous two films, which cover similar ground, (Hiroshima mon amour and L’Année dernière à Marienbad), Muriel is set in a world we can all recognise, with characters we can all identify with.   As a consequence, the film has an immediacy and relevance which possibly his earlier films (whilst still being undisputed masterpieces) possibly lacked.

Muriel is mainly concerned with two characters – a lonely middle-aged widow, Hélène (magnificently portrayed by Delphine Seyrig), and her traumatised step-son Bernard.   Both characters live in a present that is strongly influenced by the past and both expend a great deal of time and energy in trying to alter that past.  Whilst Hélène’s past has become a fantasy (as she discovers when she compares notes with her ex-lover Alphonse), Bernard’s past, more recent, is a living nightmare, scarred by memories of the atrocities he committed whilst serving in Algeria (including the brutal torture of a girl named Muriel).  Bernard attempts to alter his past by repeatedly watching a film of his army life he made whilst in Algeria and by gathering "evidence" to justify his current state of mind.  He is no more successful than his step-mother, whose last-ditch bid to return to the past is ultimately thwarted when she turns up at a disused railway station.

As in many of Resnais’ films, the location plays a paramount role in the film.  Here, the town of Boulogne-sur-mer is the perfect setting for a film where past memories intrude continually on the present consciousness.   In the haste to rebuild the town after the devastating bombings of World War II, the town planners created an uncomfortable melange past and present, picturesque old streets surrounded by ugly new development.   No town could better encapsulate the film’s meaning nor provide a more stark visual metaphor.  Like the confused memories of Hélène and Bernard, Boulogne is a place where past and present sit uncomfortably side-by-side.

Muriel is an immeasurably fascinating and complex film which requires at least three or four viewings to appreciate its genius and subtlety.  Resnais is magnificently served not just by his cast of actors (who give fine performances throughout) but also his technical crew.  Beautifully filmed (this being Resnais’ first colour film) and cleverly scripted by Jean Cayrol (who previously worked with Resnais on his documentary short Nuit et brouillard), Muriel is unquestionably one of the most extraordinary cinematic achievements of the Twentieth Century.

Although not intended as a conventional historic drama, Stavisky sheds some light on the enigmatic yet comparatively unknown main character.  A Russian émigré, Stavisky built an empire through a combination of subterfuge, fraud and false identity, becoming one of the most influential and powerful men in France in the period between the wars.  His life was the perfect sham which took in businessmen, financiers and politicians of all persuasions, yet he was also the catalyst for some major changes in society in France in the 1930s, with implications extending much wider, as the film reveals. Stavisky is among Resnais’s most technically accomplished works.  The elegant, fairytale-like photography recreates the artificial splendour of a flawed elite society oblivious to its impending demise.  Strong production values include an excellent script from Jorge Semprún and some enigmatic music from Stephen Sondheim (his first film score).  Needless to say, the period detail (costumes, sets, etc.) is impeccable.

The tribute also includes two more recent films by Resnais namely Mélo (1986) and Private Fears in Public Places/Coeurs (2006). Mélo makes a striking contrast with Alain Resnais’ previous films in which, by and large, narrative is either lacking altogether or else achieved in an astonishingly original way, often through some phenomenal photography and unconventional editing. The film adopts the conventional linear narrative form, almost to its absolute limit, to the point of actually resembling a theatrical performance.  Resnais has taken a 1920s melodrama and managed to create a remarkable piece of cinema - and he accomplishes this feat by apparently just shooting the film as a play. Of course, Resnais being Resnais, things are not this simple.  Because the narrative is so simple and unchallenging, it is not too difficult to see the genius that lies behind Resnais’ film.  The question that you are forced to ask yourself is: why is such an ordinary story so enthralling.  The genius lies not in the plot or the dialogue but in its visual representation.  The photography is captivating; a feature that underpins much of Resnais’ cinema, and in this film it is the quality of the photography - under Resnais’ masterful direction – that is the film’s main strength.

The master returns – not to cheer us, but to break our hearts with Coeurs.  Despite being comfortably into his ninth decade, Alain Resnais still hasn’t lost the knack of making films that reward the eye, stimulate the intellect and stir the soul. Coeurs is closely based on Alan Ayckbourn’s 2004 play, Private Fears in Public Places (which is the English language title of the film. The characters that we find in this film are typical of Alain Resnais’ distinctive brand of cinema.  At first, they appear to be caricatures, even grotesques, living in an artificial world that is barely two steps from a vaudevillian stage show or children’s fairytale.  But, as we are drawn into the story, the cosy artifice - which is at its most extreme in the minimalist Mélo (1986) and Smoking / No Smoking - melts away and the characters are revealed to be genuine human beings experiencing real difficulties that we can all identify with.  

Here the theme is loneliness, the abiding curse of our era.  There’s a startling irony in the fact that at time when technology has made it easier than ever before to communicate, people are finding it harder to connect with one another.  The fact that the characters in this film are all so likeable adds to the bitter poignancy of their predicament.  There is nothing in Resnais’ oeuvre to date (excluding his documentary short Nuit et brouillard) that compares with the abject bleakness of the ending to this film.  This is the sad reality of our time.

Screenings:

Night and Fog (32 minutes)          Muriel (115 minutes)

Stavisky (120 minutes)                  Mélo (112 minutes)

Coeurs (125 minutes)